Hi, my name is Owen, and for my Year 12 work experience placement I’ve been volunteering at the Royal Gunpowder Mills, doing various tasks and jobs around the site. I chose to volunteer here because the scientific background of the site relates to my Physics A-Level course and the wildlife and environmental side of the site relates to my Geography A-Level. As well as this, my interest in history and the fact that I grew up in the area and had visited the site when I was younger, before the pandemic, made me even more interested in learning about the site.

Part of the work experience here had me look through what the depths of the site’s artefact storage had to offer, at which point I found a 3D map of the old South Site of the mills which piqued my interest, so I decided to look deeper into it. The model map in question is pictured below.

Figure 1: A photograph I took of the model map of the south site in the artefact store

What is the map showing?

The map was listed on the Royal Gunpowder Mills’ online archive (Link) as being loaned to the site on the 26^th June 1998, just over 25 years ago, and depicts the South Site of the mills. If you were to visit the mills today, you would be on the North Site, where most of the buildings are conserved as a heritage site, and some are kept open for visitor access on open days. On the other hand, the South Site was less fortunate. After being sold by Royal Ordnance, most of the site was flattened and converted into the Gunpowder Park, which opened in 2004 as part of the Lee Valley Regional Park. However, prior to this decontamination and conversion, the site was just as functional as the still visible North Site. 

What was the South Site used for?

I found that this map lines up with an older map from the 3^rd April 1923, also found on the archive site, that notes the functions of the buildings at the time. Notably, a lot of the smaller buildings toward the bottom of the map are listed in the building list as “Cordite Tray Stoves”

Figure 2: A south site map from the WARGM archive index (Link)

The history of cordite at WARGM

Cordite is a powdery material comprised of nitrocellulose (or guncotton, as labelled on the map above) and nitroglycerin, mixed with the aid of acetone as a solvent. These tray stoves shown in the map are used to store the cordite in warm conditions to eventually dry off the acetone, leaving cordite behind. Cordite was created as a replacement to older forms of gunpowder, as they produced large amounts of smoke which cordite did not do. The original version of cordite was developed at the Royal Gunpowder Mills by Sir James Dewar and Sir Frederick Augustus Abel in 1889, and was named after the cord shapes it was cut into when produced.

(Left) Figure 3: Sir James Dewar at work, from Wikipedia (Link)

(Right) Figure 4: A photo of a bullet with it's casing removed, revealing the cordite inside, from Wikipedia (Link)

Cordite continued usage throughout the late 1800s and into the 1900s during both World Wars, with several newer compositions being developed to improve on the original version developed in Waltham Abbey. It even ended up being part of the detonation system used in the Little Boy atomic bomb, the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, which was dropped by the USA on Hiroshima, Japan, on 6^th August 1945. However, it’s usage in firearms dwindled as more efficient propellants were developed over the course of the 20^th century, eventually completely ceasing production in the UK in the late 1900s.